Snowbound in the Poconos
by mariu100
Summary: It's hole in the heart, minus Broadsky, eerie music, and dead squints. What's left, you ask? Well, plenty, it turns out, particularly the tidbits that didn't quite make it off the cutting room floor. Takes place after The Signs in the Silence. T, for now.
1. Start Your Engines

The disgruntled sigh which escaped Special Agent Seeley Booth was meant to be heard, and heard it certainly was by his stony-faced companion, though it seemed to make very little impression.

"Remind me again why we're heading into the boonies in the middle of a blizzard? Donut guy's been dead for at least two months. Couldn't this wait? It's not like out-of-control storms haven't caused us enough problems already-last one, I threw my back out..."

His beautiful, blue-eyed passenger looked over with a jaded expression.

"Which I fixed."

"And _then",_ the agent added, annoyed at his partner for always pooh-poohing his grievances no matter how valid they were, "I had a huge Russian guy carrying the plague land right on top of me."

As he drove, Booth's eyes traded off carelessly between the anthropologist and the road-hogging truck they were passing, and Brennan's neck and shoulder muscles, tight already after a four hour drive, tightened even more, adding to her incipient headache. She sincerely hoped road conditions improved as they left this stretch of highway behind; she didn't want to end up having to take her brand new car in for major repairs, barely a month after having purchased it.

"You keep referring to the victim as a bakery item, while he might be more accurately compared to an egg. The remains were definitely more oval in appearance. Didn't they teach you to differentiate shapes in grammar school?" she finished in a snide tone, feeling increasingly vicious towards her partner. The unhappy combination of Booth's nonstop complaining and his incautious driving habits were definitely starting to grate.

The man they were referring to, aka 'donut guy,' had just been identified as Martin Snell, a well-known and infamously nasty Virginia divorce attorney turned Poconos looney-tunes hermit. His desiccated remains had been found in an abandoned factory in Washington, curiously hunched over into the shape of a ball. Hence the unflattering, but fairly apt-at least according to Booth-term, 'donut guy'.

The agent brushed off the malignant stare.

"We were talking about the plague, Bones. Don't try to change the subject."

"As usual, your conversational patterns rely too heavily on both misconceptions and hyperboles, Booth. The man wasn't Russian; if you recall, he was Albanian, and your willful refusal to recognize his ethnic background by continuing to refer to him as Boris only prompted him to act even more aggressively towards you. And it also wasn't the plague; it was Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever which, when diagnosed early enough, is highly responsive to antiviral treatment. For your information, modern viral as well as bacterial strains of the plague also respond well to medication."

"Goody-that makes the memory of that day _so_ much better, including the giant horse pills I had to take. And it still doesn't answer my original question of why we have to do this _today,_" he finished with an unequivocal air of resentment.

Brennan steeled herself for the delivery of a lecture that she felt wouldn't have been required if she only worked with a more rational human being.

"We have to get to Snell's place as soon as possible now that we know whom the remains belong to. The length of time that the victim has been deceased only makes an expeditious search of his dwelling even more of a priority for law enforcement. As you are well aware, the longer that evidence is exposed to the elements at a potential crime scene, the greater the risk that it will be compromised or destroyed thus becoming worthless. Not pursuing this lead when we already know about it would be highly irresponsible; a clear dereliction of both our civic and professional duties. And why are you in such a hurry to get back to DC anyway?"

"You _know_ why. Because those front-row Capitals tickets I paid a lot of money for are for Friday night, which happens to be in," he pretended to look at his watch, "oh, I don't know, _five hours," _he spat out ill-humoredly. _"_Two days ago, when I told you Parker came down with mono and couldn't go with me to the game, you were all gung-ho about going in his place. Is this your way of backing out at the last minute, by having us take off on some crazy errand until we miss the game? Because really, if you don't want to go, just say so; I still have time to ask one of the guys at work."

"You don't have to sound so ungracious about my offer; when I said I would go I was only doing it as a favor to you. I didn't want you to be socially stigmatized by having to attend a public sporting event by yourself. I also know that anthropologically, ritualized athletic competitions benefit from some sort of companionship in order for the concomitant feelings of euphoria or despair elicited by the final score to be experienced more fully by the spectator."

"So what you're saying is you were only doing it because you felt sorry for me, because you didn't think I could fill the extra seat on my own."

"In essence, yes."

"I don't need your sympathy. What, you didn't think I could find anyone else to go with me? I got friends. Lots of friends," Booth retorted moodily. "Hundreds of friends."

"Sure you do."

"What's that supposed to mean? And it's not like you're some party animal with a huge social life yourself. Your idea of a good time on a Friday night is reading the Encyclopedia Britannica while you chow down on a tofu hotdog alone in your apartment. Am I right, or what?"

Brennan appeared to be genuinely incensed by the decidedly unappealing assessment of her social life, and when he saw her downturned mouth, Booth began to feel remorseful about being so hard on her. After all, things really weren't all _that_ bad; they still had plenty of time to make it back before the puck drop.

Besides, the company could be worse. Way worse.

He glanced over, ready with the half-assed apology that was almost guaranteed to calm her down, when he was unexplainably hit over the head with a crystal clear image of an alternate future life with his partner; one in which they _weren't_ just partners. For a second, he was completely engulfed by feelings of affection and desire for her so strong, so overwhelming, they made him lose his original train of thought. Feelings that also appeared, at least in his imagination, to be reciprocated; love forever sandwiched between rounds of gentle bickering, like the white cream filling inside a Little Debbie Cake.

The waiting "I'm sorry, Bones," never found its way out.

But there was more.

Because he was also sure that in his weird deja vu, crazy parallel-universe vision he'd been given they were married; one hundred percent, iron-clad, happily married. The unlikely warm and fuzzy domestic picture of them together in that way-so completely out of sync with experiences from anything in his own family's threadbare past-left a painful void in his chest as it began to fade.

Finally blinking the last of the aching snapshots away, he focused on the rhythmic 'swish-swish' of the wiper blades to help him find his way back to the present. When he finally emerged from his temporary stupor, he noticed that he wasn't the only one who appeared to have been daydreaming; his companion also seemed eerily absent as she stared blankly at the monochrome scenery.

She turned to him slowly and their eyes met.

"So, you don't want me to go with you?" Brennan asked in a quiet voice that she knew, much as she had tried to disguise it, still carried something akin to uncertainty and hurt in its timbre. She looked away, mortified at having put her vulnerability out on such overt display.

Booth, sensing the sudden shift in his partner's mood, immediately decided to dial down his own prickly act a notch or two.

"Yeah-I want you to go with me, Bones" he replied in an equally hushed tone. "I just want you to want it too, as much as _I_ want it."

They both seemed to recognize that the comment could be interpreted in one of several ways, and the car suddenly grew silent again. Speed bumps, potholes, stop lights and caution signs, sometimes crowded into your field of vision all at once; all making it almost impossible to get a good view of both the wonders and the dangers that lay ahead.

Nothing about their relationship was simple these days; the road they were on-had been on since that last blizzard they'd accidentally spent together crammed inside a tiny elevator with a bunch of metal chairs for company-continued to require very, very delicate handling. But still, being who they were, they drove on despite all the many potential hazards.


	2. Boxing Day

"The trip shouldn't take long," Brennan said, keeping her eyes carefully glued to the stack of materials piled in front of her.

At least those disparate, wrinkled bits of loose paper sitting on her lap were easier to deconstruct and analyze than the mess of feelings her partner routinely brought out in her, particularly of late. It had, perhaps, always been that way when it came to him; but over the last few months, her latent inner-turmoil had definitely reached epidemic, near-crippling proportions.

Because depressingly, finally understanding what one wanted out of life did not necessarily equate with getting it-or even knowing how to get it-even with several impressive doctorate degrees staring down at one's learned self from every wall.

"It's not as if I'm going to go over Snell's cabin with a mass spectrometer," she continued, giving in to Booth's juvenile need for reassurance. "I hardly brought any equipment. My only purpose in going there is to ascertain whether there's any possibility that the murder could have been committed at his place. If our brief inspection supports that conclusion, the Jeffersonian staff and the FBI technicians can perform a more thorough investigation of the premises tomorrow. Consider this a scouting trip."

"_Shouldn't take long?_ We've been driving for four hours in practically white-out conditions and we have four more to drive back, not counting however long we stay at Snell's hut. My back is starting to hurt."

"You're overdramatizing the facts once again in another effort to garner undue sympathy. It's barely flurrying; the bulk of the storm isn't even supposed to hit this part of Pennsylvania for at least six more hours. Besides, we're almost there-and I'll drive on the way back, if it makes you feel any better." She closed the thick folder and put it back down on the floor, and after a moment of reflection, she gazed up at Booth with a look that was both solemn and oddly intense.

"We'll make it to your game, and I promise that once there I _will_ enjoy myself. I was being disingenuous before, Booth; I _want_ to be there. I want it as much as you do." The statement was issued with a gravitas that made her partner squirm in his seat. Brennan's eyes went back to the colorless landscape, but then she threw another quick, clandestine glance in Booth's direction, which she unhappily noticed he caught.

Booth felt something, an electric spark, do an end-zone victory dance up and down the muscles flanking his spine. She wanted to be there, with him. Were they still talking about sports, he wondered?

"And _you_ want to be there, obviously, so it should all work out, right?" she asked, catching herself just in the nick of time and seamlessly switching back to the self-assured Brennan of old.

So maybe it was only about the hockey, after all.

"Uh huh. But you're buying the first round of beer for making me do this. In your car, which you're making me drive. You know I hate this thing-it wants to do everything for you. It tells you not to pass when you want to pass, it breaks when you don't want to break. I can do my own parallel parking job just fine, thank you very much-I'm not fourteen. And can I tell you it's not the safest thing out there in this ice pond we're driving on? My SUV would've been _way_ better."

"Has it crossed your mind that this car may actually be smarter than you? Perhaps you should consider following it's advice."

"_Really_? This car is _not_ smarter than me."

The barb had unerringly found its mark right in the center of her partner's brittle ego, but Brennan refrained from smiling in order to keep the bickering-and her headache-to a minimum. Her raised eyebrows, however, had no problem betraying her gratuitous merriment, all at his expense.

"My car is better," Booth taunted back in the most childish tone he could come up with.

"The _government's_ fuel-inefficient car," she reminded him, eliciting another fierce scowl from the agent. "I already explained it to you at length; significant portions of the research materials for the book I'm writing were scattered all over my car and I needed to organize them while you drove because I won't have time this weekend. There was too much paperwork for me to move. Had I bothered to pack everything and transfer it to your vehicle before we left, we'd still be in Washington. It would have taken a great deal of time, which, as you so aptly pointed out and continue to bring up with excruciating regularity, is at a premium given that we need to be at your hockey rink in a few hours. Taking my car was yet another example of my overall thoughtfulness when it concerns your wellbeing."

He rolled his eyes, opting to change the topic before they fell into another of their epic pro-wrestling matches.

"Hockey _arena_. So you still planning on going out of town this weekend with all this crap coming down?"

"Yes; I'm leaving tomorrow morning. The worst of the snow is supposed to be over by then and I'm certain that the interstate highways will be plowed and salted anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem. Since the lab is closing on Monday for the yearly fire-code inspection, I'm using the opportunity to attend a conference in Baltimore on the preservation of neolithic drawings in the Tassili n'Ajjer region of the Saharan Desert. I know several of the speakers, and I find the topic fascinating as well as compelling, so it should be fun."

She looked over to Booth, to see if he had some disparaging thing to say about her choice of adjective for the upcoming weekend, but he appeared not to be taking note of it. Either he missed it, or he had uncharacteristically resolved to be a little nicer the rest of the trip. And then it came, the tongue-in-cheek expression that she knew so well and that never failed to irritate her.

"Loads of fun, there, Bones."

"What are _you_ doing this weekend? Do you have Parker?" she asked in return, bypassing the tempting opportunity to bait him again.

"No-and for once in my life I'm glad. Like I need to catch something called 'the kissing disease' at my age-I can just hear the comments at work. It's payback time for Rebecca," he said, giving free reign to the smuggest of grins.

That disarming smile, silly, uncalled for, immature as it was, far more appropriate on a ten-year-old boy's face than that of a nearly forty-year-old man, still got to her with it's unrestrained mischief, and she found herself smiling along with her partner, totally against her better judgment.

"Are you planning on working part of the weekend, then? If we find anything in Snell's cabin, you could hook a leg around this case."

"G_et a leg up _on the case, Bones; there's no hooking of any kind going on here. And no, I'm not going anywhere near the office; they scheduled this stupid FBI teamwork retreat Saturday through Monday out in some dorky boy scout campsite. Paintball, lots of talking, trust exercises-all the twelve-year old girl hooey Sweets loves. At least _someone's_ gonna be having a good time."

"Oh-I remember. That _too_ should be fun."

"It won't be," he replied flatly, ignoring the streams of sarcasm oozing from her voice. "And that's why I said I had an out-of-town emergency and I couldn't go; I am _not _singing Kumbaya on my hard-earned, personal time. I don't want to blow my cover by showing up at the Hoover this weekend. Donut guy can wait."

"Is that why you were home when I called you this morning?"

"Yup-part of my cover."

"What did you tell them?"

"I said I had a dying uncle in Idaho I had to visit, and I needed to leave this afternoon before it was too late," he crowed, obviously taking great pride in the contrivance.

"Idaho? You've probably never even been there, Booth. Besides, a rudimentary search of your family records by personnel would reveal you have no living uncles, and almost certainly no relatives whatsoever in that state. You're an FBI agent; you should be intimately acquainted with the tenet that the more complex a lie is, the more likely it is to fall apart under review. Effective deceit always requires a solid basis in facts familiar to the deceiver."

"What's complex about Idaho? Potatoes, rodeos, lots of hay. It's not like anyone's going to be asking me what I did there; it's _Idaho_, not Paris."

"You've been warned."

A large, dark blob suddenly appeared to their left through the curtain of pelting snowflakes.

"Hey, there's the ranger's station. We better stop and ask someone for pointers on getting to donut guy's cabin-it looked like a bear to find on the internet. Nothing's marked."

"Oh, that is very good" she said, her eyes growing wide as she suddenly burst into a cascade of uninhibited laughter. "Bears-because we're in a state park, and there's bears here!"

Booth stared at his partner with the look of a long-suffering cellmate. "Yes, that's hilarious, Bones. No booze for you tonight; I think you might be buzzed enough already."

He applied the brakes very slowly when he saw the sign for the park station lot, but the car still skidded in thin layer of slush before finally coming to an inelegant stop.

"See-didn't I tell you! Sucky brakes; not _smart_ brakes."

Brennan made a sour face as they pulled into the station's empty parking lot, which remained firmly in place as they walked towards the modern wood building with its overdone rustic cabin motif.

"And for the record," he whined, "I got friends."

The anthropologist's face rearranged itself to reveal the teensiest of smirks.

"Apparently, hundreds."


	3. Ranger Rick

The stout, red-faced man behind the sturdy information desk stared at the two people coming through the door with an undisguised sense of wonder. He couldn't have seemed more surprised by their presence in his station had they just emerged from a flying saucer, gangly, bug-eyed and day-glo green all over.

He rose to his feet and, quickly slamming a ranger's hat back on his balding pate, waited for the whirlwind of cold air and snow that burst into the room with the newcomers to subside before issuing his well-practiced greeting.

"Howdy folks. Can I help you with anything?" he asked, his voice both friendly and openly curious.

His avid interest in them was obvious and Brennan guessed that the ranger had probably stopped expecting visitors for the day, with the deteriorating weather conditions likely being a deterrent to less tenacious travelers.

"Hitched at the courthouse, right?" the man suggested hopefully, nodding towards the pair's dress clothes.

Brennan's mouth fell open in outrage, but nothing came out.

"Lots around here, especially on the weekends. If you're looking for hotels, there's a whole bunch of brochures on accommodations on that rack over there. Some really romantic little nooks with fireplaces and heart-shaped pools for honeymooners-even pools that look like champagne glasses" he gushed, giving his increasingly flummoxed listeners a sage smile. "We may have been replaced by Vegas as the top honeymoon destination in the U.S., but the Poconos is still a great little spot for couples. You might want to find a place fast though, while you can still see three feet ahead of you. It's getting nasty out there. I just heard the wind is really starting to blow in from the northwest, and that's never a good thing when there's so much Gulf moisture up in the air; I was just about to close shop and get my behind outta here while I still could. Now they're saying the thing could last for days and dump up to four feet of snow."

He shook his head ruefully.

"Crazy, crazy weather we're having; snow in late April. Nuts."

Brennan finally found her voice.

"We're _not_ on our honeymoon" she retorted testily, incensed that anyone could dismiss her and Booth's obvious professionalism so cavalierly.

Why were people so inordinately fond of leaping to conclusions about their relationship, she wondered angrily? Were her and Booth's wishes and fears when it came to each other really _that_ obvious to the rest of the world?

Booth, who until now had been stunned into silence by the man's incredibly risky assumptions, finally found the courage to speak up before his partner's mushrooming irascibility turned into physical rage. The clueless ranger obviously had no idea just who he was dealing with; Bones on a bad day wasn't just dangerous-she was downright lethal.

"Nooo! _No_ honeymoon," he exclaimed, shaking his head like he'd seen one of the grisly apparitions from The Shining. "And we're definitely _not_ looking for hotels with heart-shaped pools."

He bolstered the vigorous denial by pulling out his badge, just so there'd be no more misunderstandings. The situation between him and Bones was already tense enough after their last meteorologically-cursed outing together without third parties pouring kerosene on their humble little candle. They could hopefully get to that elusive _there_ all on their own without any third-party prodding-wherever _there_ was supposed to be.

"I'm Special Agent Seeley Booth and this is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan. Have you ever heard of a guy called Martin Snell?"

He showed the stocky man Angela's facial reconstruction featuring lots of scraggly, overgrown facial hair, and then he handed him a photograph of what was presumably the same man, younger, still distinctly unattractive, but much better groomed.

"Old man Snell? Sure; he lives in the park. You can't work here and not know him."

The ranger pored over the two depictions of the victim, holding them away from his face at different angles.

"The photo I don't recognize, but the drawing definitely looks like him."

"What do you mean, he lives _in_ the park?" Brennan interrupted.

"The Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resources condemned all the land around his place when they added this area to the main reserve a few years ago. They offered Snell a ton of money to buy him out being that he was the last private owner left, but he wouldn't do it-said he was some bigwig attorney from DC who had just retired and that he wasn't going anywhere. If you ask me, the guy's a little off. He threatened to take everyone to court and derail the entire park creation process if anyone set foot on his property; the environmentalists about had a fit. Right around his house is one of the prime habitats in the state for the shale barren pussytoes."

Brennan nodded gravely.

"The shale barren _what_?" Booth asked, his eyebrows practically meeting in the center of his forehead in bewilderment. "What the hell is _that_?"

"Antennaria Virginica" his partner replied. "A deciduous groundcover known for its affinity to poor soils; I believe it's an endangered species in this area."

"What, you channeling Hodgins now?"

The ranger looked impressed, and perhaps even a little in love despite the fact that the object of his affection clearly didn't seem the least bit interested in returning any of his good will.

"The lady knows her Pennsylvania flora. There's a group devoted to the preservation of the pussytoes-they're knows as 'kitties', which is a good thing because the other critter name they might have gone with wasn't so family friendly."

"The pussies? What's remotely salacious about that?" Brennan asked, looking as confused as Booth had been just seconds ago.

"You're lady friend is a gem!" the park ranger chuckled approvingly.

The response was immediate-and predictable.

"I'm _not_ Agent Booth's _lady friend_," the anthropologist replied with animosity. The garrulous man, obviously not merely content with testing her patience, had apparently set out to test the limits of his lifespan as well.

Booth couldn't take a second more of the increasingly deranged conversational detour; doing a quick chopping motion with his hands, he decided to fence in the posse of clowns threatening to ruin his what was left of his Friday night with their tomfoolery.

Really, didn't _anyone_ care that there was a very expensive hockey game on the line?

"On topic, people. Snell?"

The ranger's head snapped back to attention.

"Oh, Snell, right. I think the government hoo-has thought it was easier and cheaper to have him stay on than to fight him, so they let him keep what is known as an 'inholding'. He has an easement to get in and out of the park. The state lawyers probably figured they'd be better off waiting and condemning the property after he dies; I doubt any relatives of his are going to be falling all over themselves to live out there. The land's use has been restricted for years, even before Snell moved in. You can't build anything new on it, and the road going there is a mess."

Their interviewee suddenly looked suspicious.

"He get into trouble or something?"

"No, he's dead. He was found murdered in Washington. _Was_ he the kind of guy that gets into trouble?"

"That explains a lot-it's been pretty quiet out there lately. You know, I probably knew Snell better than most, which isn't saying much, and I can't really say he was too bad. Kept to himself, mostly; had 'No Trespassing' signs all over the place, but other than messing a little with hikers-you know, hollering, shooting his air rifle, beating a few pots and pans, it's not like he ever did anything to anyone he found walking around his cabin. Don't know how he did it, staying in that old shack without gas or electricity-I'm pretty sure his propane tank's been empty most of the winter. His place looks like something Abraham Lincoln would have lived in, except not nearly as nice. A Martha Stewart log home it ain't. Looked even worse last week after the bad winter we've had, but that figures, since he hasn't been around to work on it."

"Is there a driveable road out there?" Booth asked.

"Depends on what you're driving. Service trucks do all right; Snell had a jeep."

Booth gave Brennan a dirty look.

"Regular car."

"In _this_ weather?" the man asked with an expression of humorous incredulity. "I wouldn't recommend it. Thought you fancy FBI types all drove tough, he-man vehicles," he teased.

"Apparently, it's a car with a graduate degree. Can we make it?"

"If you're determined enough, probably so-just keep checking the latest weather reports on the emergency channel, because when it gets too bad they just shut down the road through the park without much warning-too many icy turns. They don't start plowing again until the main highways have been cleared, which could take a while these days with all the budget cuts. And in any event don't put it off too long; after dark, the dirt path to his cabin is really hard to see-no room to turn around until the end, neither, without risking falling into a ditch. There's all sorts of ravines out there too, and the snow isn't going to help things. Here, let me give you this trail map, and I'll do my best to draw where the road to his place starts; since it goes through private property, it isn't on the regular ones we hand out to visitors."

"Thanks. Listen, Ranger..." Booth scrunched up his eyes, staring at the man's name tag and immediately breaking into a huge grin.

"John Rick. I know; I get that look all the time."

Brennan looked puzzled.

"It's Ranger Rick, Bones!" Booth said with the unvarnished amazement of a six-year old. Not surprisingly, the name didn't seem to do much for his partner. "Oh, forget it," he huffed.

The agent turned to the park employee.

"If you remember anything about Snell or any unusual people who might have been wandering around his property recently, give me a call. You've been a lot of help."

"Sure. Always happy to assist the feds."

Booth gave the man his card.

"I'm telling you; watch out for those ravines," the ranger shouted as his entertaining guests left. "They get awfully slick in this weather. Like going down an icy mountain on a toboggan, except without the toboggan."

Brennan marched back to the car in a distinct snit, repeatedly swatting the barrage of stinging ice crystals from her eyes as she narrowly avoided walking right through the middle of a snowdrift. The conversation with the ranger had left her in a bad mood, although she couldn't quite put her finger on precisely why. Maybe four hours in a confined space with Booth and the specter of four more had begun to take their toll-which in and of itself raised some interesting questions. She turned her back on the strong winds and peered at the directions the man had drawn out for them.

"You must be feeling very generous today" she told her partner disparagingly, folding the paper in half and plunking her behind back in the passenger seat, Booth's sore back be damned. "The man was not only compulsively exasperating-which behavior you tacitly encouraged by allowing him to needlessly ramble on-he was of practically no help to us. This topographical depiction might actually be worse than possessing nothing at all. If we're late to your game, you'll only have yourself to blame."

"Encouraged?" Booth asked in an offended tone. "I was getting _information_, Bones; isn't that why we came all the way out here when we could've been sitting with a cold beer rink-side an hour ago? I can't help it if the guy had nothing else to do and went a little overboard with all the advice; for what it's worth, he certainly made _way_ more sense to me than your know-it-all car. Besides, a little kindness goes a long way in this business; always good to keep a spare in the trunk. That's also why _I_ have friends."

Brennan put her newly-organized research materials in the back seat and placed the map on her lap.

"Not in this car," she replied under her breath.


	4. Clearing in the Woods

_If I've accidentally missed replying to any of your very generous reviews, my apologies, and thanks! Sometimes my emails end up in the weirdest places on my computer and I don't find them for weeks. I really appreciate all the encouraging words, though. (PS-promise I haven't forgotten about my other stories if you happen to be following them. Last month just got unexpectedly busy.)_

With the pavement quickly turning to slurry and the clouds shifting to an even more toxic shade of steel-wool, Booth's mood-iffy already-began a sharp, threatening nosedive south. What could have once been categorized as mere crabbiness was now reaching positively Vesuvian levels.

Miles through the park's deserted main road revealed no signs of any kind of clearing in the woods which might lead them to donut guy's cabin. And after nearly four hours of constant breaking and accelerating because he absolutely refused to hand over the reins of his fate to the vagaries of cruise-control, the mild burning sensation along his spine had become a gargantuan, epic knot which no amount of butt-shifting in his seat was likely to untie.

Could there be any sort of upside to this ill-timed expedition that might justify the tons of ibuprofen he was going to have to choke down later tonight? The loss of two perfectly good, center-ice seats along with a steady supply of cold beer?

Where was the silver lining that he usually always managed to find in almost every situation?

He sullenly concluded that this time around, there just wasn't any.

And _that's_ when things finally reached a boiling point for the agent. Slamming the steering wheel of Brennan's car hard, he let out a resentful grunt before tightening his knuckles once again in a stranglehold around the slender, vinyl-wrapped circle. The automotive component might not be to blame for their current situation, but since _someone_ couldn't pay, _something_ had to.

Because he couldn't very well throttle his partner although he was sorely tempted to, for lots of different but equally valid reasons.

She was, after all, his partner. It wouldn't look good on his record to be charged with assault and battery on a coworker, especially a woman.

And perhaps an even bigger concern, he was well aware that Bones was more than capable of defending herself. The prospect of spending the next two weeks icing his nether parts or possibly looking for their replacement was really not such a happy one.

Plus, the most troubling fact of all remained-he liked the occasionally infuriating forensic anthropologist _way_ too much. Sometimes, far, far more than was at all remotely safe for his mental health.

So rather than taking things out on her as he was currently fantasizing about, he gripped the innocent wheel harder and whacked the radio button on to release some of his pent-up irritation. Hopefully, his blatant manhandling of his partner's new prized possession would telegraph how unhappy he was at now coming dangerously close to missing the entire first period of the game.

"Please be more gentle with the electronics in the car" she scolded sternly, bypassing the obvious source of his bad temper.

Booth could be _such_ a baby sometimes, Brennan griped in silence as she watched him press random buttons on the console of her car. She looked down her nose in his direction and frowned.

Tension, tension, tension.

Both passenger and driver were feeling it, though neither seemed prepared to acknowledge why it was there-why it'd been there for months.

As they stewed in their respective vats of unidentified frustration, an official-sounding voice suddenly droned on to life on the radio.

_In others news, this is a reminder to all of our listeners that there is a winter weather alert in effect beginning at six pm tonight and continuing until late Sunday morning for the following counties... Expect up to four feet of snow to accumulate in some outlying areas with drifts up to eight feet high, and winds possibly gusting to 45 miles per hour. The state's Department of Transportation has requested that non-emergency vehicles stay off roads and highways in affected areas. Commissioner Michael Campos warns that poor driving conditions and impaired visibility may make it impossible for emergency crews to reach stranded travelers in a timely manner and urges the use of caution and common sense when venturing outside. Again, a winter weather advisory..._

A final poke from a restless finger abruptly turned the radio off. The FBI agent looked to his right, a belligerent I-told-you-so practically pouncing from his eyes.

"Caution and common sense, Bones. Do we have any?"

Brennan stared out the windshield as her resolve crumpled. The snow _was_ starting to pick up, and they weren't even to the cabin yet. Still, they were practically there. All that tedious, unpleasant driving, the litany of passive-aggressive comments she had endured for most of the day, for nothing.

Angrily tossing the map in the backseat, she closed her eyes, an unexplained lump suddenly forming deep inside her throat.

"If you want to go back Booth, feel free to turn around" she said dejectedly, finally capitulating to the meteorological realities. "I've already come to terms with the fact that we won't get to Snell's cabin today. We'll have to come back Tuesday, when conditions have improved, assuming this road is accessible by then."

She didn't know she was pouting, and that's exactly what made the expression on the rosy mouth with its protruding, slightly quivering lower lip so blastedly effective.

Curse and damn his fate, Booth thought.

Never in the whole history of the Seeley Booth/Temperance Brennan partnership had the FBI agent been able to stand up to that little-girl-accidentally-left-behind-at-the-store look of hers, and it sure as hell wasn't going to happen now.

"You're going to be really disappointed if we don't make it there today, aren't you?" he asked gently.

Brennan, pretending not to care but realizing she was probably doing it poorly because for some unfathomable reason she _did_ care, shrugged her shoulders in what she hoped passed for insouciance.

"It's alright, Booth. This clearly unproductive journey has already taken up enough of your time. Let's just drive to your game and forget about Snell for today."

It was stupid to get teary eyed over such a minor setback, but even so, Brennan felt the rims of her eyes beginning to sting and she turned away from her partner, trying to sniff back tears before he had the chance to notice the uncharacteristic moment of weakness-her second one of the day, to boot. It's just that for a minute there, this adventure of theirs had seemed like it was taking them somewhere. Somewhere that wasn't necessarily going to end up in a scene of murder and mayhem. An idiotic assumption, because that's exactly where they'd been heading-that, or a hockey game.

And now, back to square one. Although she acknowledged that in all probability they had never actually progressed from that starting position.

Booth inspected his insanely pretty, misty-eyed companion carefully and then he smiled.

"Hey, what the hell. We're already here, right? And that trail has to be close-a park ranger can't be wrong. Especially not a guy with a name like Ranger Rick. Let's just keep looking for a little while longer-how's that, Bones? The road's got to be around here somewhere."

"How about caution and common sense?"

"Eh-who needs those? Not Seeley Booth and Temperance Brennan, that's who," he intoned cheerfully. "We're so good together, we can afford to throw common sense out the window."

Her face lit up immediately, exactly as if he'd just given her a bouquet of ancient ulnas for her birthday.

Booth-so charming, so devastatingly sweet, Brennan admitted grudgingly as her downtrodden spirits began to lift. Underneath the cocky attitude, the impossible amounts of swagger, and the occasional thorn or two, nothing but sweetness and charm. One of the many reasons she was so irrationally drawn to her partner on all levels-physical, emotional and maybe even spiritual, not that she necessarily believed in that concept. All those surprising contradictions that defined Special Agent Seeley Joseph Booth; that kept her guessing and coming back for more as she attempted time and time again to decipher the mystery that lay at the heart of the former Ranger.

Well that, along with his undeniably impressive physical attributes. She belatedly bit the inside of her cheek to try to keep a suspicious grin off her lips.

"What?" he asked, looking befuddled.

"Nothing. It's just that sometimes you _are_ extremely nice. I don't like to bring it up very often because I know it only encourages you to have an even higher opinion of yourself than you already do, but it's true."

After mulling over the compliment, he turned to her with a tilt of the head and a trademark smirk. "Yeah-you're right. I _am_ sweet."

The peaceful interlude, like many others before it, wasn't meant to last.

"And _that's_ precisely why I didn't want to tell you. Booth, there's a raccoon in the middle of the road-please pay more attention to where you're going!"

Uttering a mild curse word, Booth swerved around the lumbering animal, missing it by a hair.

He sped on for a couple of miles more until his companion, who was purposefully refusing to humor her coworker any further now that she'd gotten her way, held out her hand and pointed to a hard-to-spot opening in the woods. The words 'no trespassing, private land' had been hand-written on a sign tacked onto a rusty chain which ran between two beat-up metal poles flanking the entrance.

"There, I believe that might be the road to the victim's cabin" she announced. "The location approximates the one Mr. Rick drew out for us."

Pulling over and getting out of the car, Booth eyed the otherwise unmarked trail warily; at least the ground was mostly frozen, he consoled himself. Trying to traverse that glorified donkey path in the mud, in this stupid go-cart, would be impossible.

"You sure you want to do this?" he asked as his partner joined him by the side of the road. "Last chance; once we're on this thing, we're kind of committed to it. I think Ranger Rick might be right. It doesn't look like there's much room to U-turn it, probably not until the very end."

_"Until the very end..."_

Those very austere-sounding words began to register slowly inside Brennan's brain.

Was she committed? _Was she?_ Yes, she was.

"I _do_ want to do this, Booth," she replied, mirroring almost word for word her assertion about their hockey game from earlier that morning. "And I understand what you're saying; once we embark on this venture, there are no U-turns; I know that."

Again, there was a vehemence to her voice that made Booth wonder what the heck they were talking about. Was this last minute escapade of theirs just one big metaphor for their relationship of late? If so, that might very well be his missing silver lining-loopy park rangers, errant raccoons, and all.

"You heard what Mr. Rick said," she reminded him. "The cabin's already in a state of advanced dilapidation; if we wait much longer, there may be nothing left for us to examine."

Something that could also be said about their chances at a relationship, Brennan noted.

Somebody had to push this unwieldly behemoth along, and Booth and his almost unnatural skittishness when it came to making a move were quite obviously not up to the task. While she too had once suffered from the stinging pain associated with romantic rejection, she supposed he'd been turned down way more times, possibly instilling in him a chronic fear of proposals of any kind.

So perhaps forward movement was entirely up to her.

After inspecting her closely, Booth made the scientist stand behind him. He pulled his gun out of its holster and fired. A single shot propelled an ancient lock in a dozen directions, leaving the chain slack and the path clear.

Booth looked at the broken fragments while he considered this very strange day so replete with odd conversations. He decided that before he got back into the car, he simply _had_ to be sure about things, although at this point he wasn't sure what it was he had to be sure about.

"You _positive_ about this?" he asked, twin rising eyebrows underscoring the importance of both his question and her answer.

"Positive," she said.

An accompanying luminous smile-not entirely partnery, not entirely friendshippy, made countless candy-colored balloons take flight within the special agent's chest.

He smiled back, suddenly feeling like a brand new man.

"Okay-we're doing this then" he said. He rubbed his hands together enthusiastically.

They got back in the vehicle and the engine hummed quietly to life.

The car, a little unsteadily, a little wobbly perhaps, began to creep forward rather slowly, but forward it crept.


End file.
